IPCC Finally Acknowledges Its “Himalayan Blunder”

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Pallava Bagla is science journalist and television presenter working from the world’s largest democracy, India, a correspondent for Science and Science Editor for New Delhi Television. Well known for his skills to swim against the tide. He can be reached at pallava.bagla@gmail.com. Follow on Twitter @pallavabagla.

BANGALORE, India—Amidst the doomsday scenario presented by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) there is one silver lining, at least the glaciers in the Himalayas are not disappearing for at least a couple of centuries. The billion plus people who inhabit the fertile flood plains of the Ganga, Indus and Brahmaputra can breathe easy that the rivers which nurture them are not drying up anytime soon.

The Himalayas are considered the 'Third Pole’ since outside the polar regions they contain the largest amount of freshwater that is frozen into snow and ice. / Credit: Pallava Bagla

The IPCC had earlier asserted that the glaciers in the high Himalayas—also dubbed the “third pole”—would disappear by 2035. Now in its latest report, released in Yokohama, Japan on Sunday, it says “it is virtually certain that these projections [the current glacier melt rates] are more reliable than an earlier erroneousassessment of complete disappearance by 2035.”

What a climb down from the highly alarmist situation that the Himalayan glaciers would melt in another 21 years to a point where it acknowledges they will be around much more than our lifetimes! I am not a climate change denialist but am certainly against the trumpeting of exaggerated claims that are often made only on the basis of extrapolations from dodgy mathematical models.

The flood plain of the massive River Brahmaputra from eastern India. The river originates in the high Himalayas in the Tibetan region and if the waters were to dry up due to climate change it could become a point of tension between India and China. / Credit: Pallava Bagla

The 2007 Himalayan glacier error had badly tarnished the reputation of the Nobel Peace Prize winning IPCC. Now Chris Field, one of the lead authors of the latest report, tells the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the Himalayan glacier error was “really serious.” According to the French news agency AFP, in the massive Fifth Assessment Report on climate impacts the IPCC said Himalayan glaciers would shrink by 45 percent by 2100, if Earth’s average surface temperature rose by 1.8 degrees Celsius. Under a far warmer scenario of 3.7 C, the reduction would be 68 percent. Field told the ABC, “we’ve tried to double check and triple check and quadruple check everything in this report.”

In its Fourth Assessment Report, released in 2007, the IPCC had committed what came to be known as the `Himalayan Blunder’ or ‘Glacier-gate’ when it asserted that Himalayan glaciers “are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.” It had then relied on un-published “grey literature.”

In 2009, against odds I had pursued an investigation that the IPCC had got its facts very wrong on the state of glaciers in the Himalayas. That was a heady time for climate change, all eyes were on the Copenhagen climate summit and there I was, researching a story that went totally against the prevailing tide. Believe me it was tough, very tough to even conceive a story that would question the claims of that `holy cow’ of climate change, the IPCC.

Glaciers in the Himalayas are mostly at high altitudes usually accessible after a very hard to trek so only a dozen or so have been extensively studied. / Credit: Pallava Bagla

I had heard subdued murmurs since 2007 that IPCC’s Himalayan glacier claim was absurd, but like glaciers, glaciologists also move slowly in publishing their results and it was an explosive Indian government report that gave me the right peg on which to hang the story that I had been researching for almost two years!

In 2009, India’s then Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh released a study on Himalayan glaciers that suggested that they may not be melting as much due to global warming as it was widely feared. Ramesh accused the IPCC of being “alarmist” in an article that I wrote for Science, saying, “We don’t need to write the epitaph for the glaciers, but we need a concentrated scientific and policy focus on the Himalayan ecosystem since the truth is incredibly complex.”

Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, dismissed the Indian government report, prepared by seasoned glaciologist V. K. Raina, as “voodoo science” and said the IPCC was a “sober body” whose work was verified by governments. Subsequently as part of the major reform process the IPCC `strengthened’ its procedures and was even subjected to an extended probe by the Inter Academy Council from Netherlands.

A sadhu or holy man offers prayer to the river goddess Ganga. The Ganges river is India’s holiest river and originates in the Gangotri glacier in the Himalayas. More than a billion people live in the alluvial plains of the Ganga, Indus and Brahmaputra rivers who would be drastically affected if the glaciers were to disappear altogether. / Credit: Pallava Bagla

It was not easy and as a journalist I was attacked for what I had written. Richard Stone, then Asia Editor for Science said in 2010, “In the weeks that followed, Pallava’s coverage did indeed draw criticism. IPCC chair Rajendra K. Pachauri expressed ‘disappointment,’ while far less polite remarks came from scientists who seemed to believe that the IPCC report was sacrosanct. Pallava has said that all of his skills as a journalist were tested, but in fact he never flinched.”

As a mark of recognition the story fetched me what some dub the “Oscar of Science Journalism,” the prestigious Perlman Award for 2010 given by the highly regarded American Geophysical Union (AGU). The selection committee applauded my articles for addressing “a very serious issue in the earth sciences. [Bagla’s] articles serve as a reminder to journalists to question sources, to think harder about the agendas and ideas of those people about whom they are reporting, and to stop the steamroller of opinions or ideas when the facts just don’t back them up. Although Bagla’s articles reveal embarrassing foibles of scientists, ultimately they also illustrate science’s ability to self-correct.”

I was honoured for two articles. “No sign yet of Himalayan meltdown, Indian report finds,” published in Science, which explored the dissent among glaciologists about a prediction that Himalayan glaciers would imminently disappear. The other was, “Himalayan glaciers melting deadline ‘a mistake,’” published by BBCNews, which investigated the possibility that the controversial prediction resulted from a typographical error.

Yet all was not lost as there is a huge silver lining in all this heartburn. Less than 10 weeks after I wrote about the exaggerated melt rate in 2009, the IPCC formally expressed its now famous—and until this week only—‘regret.’ Now five years later it has finally accepted that it made an ‘erroneous’ assertion. All internal procedures failed at IPCC and it was left to a journalist to show a mirror to this august body of 2,500 of the world’s best climate scientists. Self-correction is such an important part of practicing good science. Science journalists can occasionally contribute to strengthening the scientific process. This is a unique case when science and science journalism both triumphed.

About the Author: Pallava Bagla is science journalist and television presenter working from the world’s largest democracy, India, a correspondent for Science and Science Editor for New Delhi Television. Well known for his skills to swim against the tide. He can be reached at pallava.bagla@gmail.com. Follow on Twitter @pallavabagla.

45 Comments

Blunders are to be regretted, but let’s not throw the baby out with the (not so hot) bath water. OK, glaciers will be around for 100 years. Will we?

My “take” on the meaning (meaning for government and other action, not scientific meaning) is that we’d do far better to roll up our sleeves now and get busy with fighting as-yet-fightable climate change than taking time out to ergret an error (much less to take comfort from this error).

In my view, waiting to address the causes of CC/GW is like playing a game of Russian Roulette in which another bullet is put into the revolver’s cylinder each year. What started as a “gamble” soon becomes a “sure thing” even if we don’t know with precision just when.

Good to see that the best system that we have for examining the world around us, the scientific method, does still work, all be it with some kicking and screaming needed and some good solid journalism. At the end of the day if the evidence does not stand up then it will be found out.
Of course this was known to be flawed some time ago,
but I wonder what took the IPCC so long. A charitable view might be that it was busy collecting better data to determine the truth. A less charitable view might be that good old human embarrassment took hold of their tongue.

Actually, SciAm does not want comments from climate deniers, plain and simple. If you can’t accept that the vast majority of scientific evidence points towards human activity altering the climate then maybe this website isn’t for you. In that case, you might find your beliefs more acceptable to Creationist websites or right-wing political blogs…

Actually, this site is a great place for the creationists and right wingers to hang out. They can learn a lot from SA and Climatewire. I have not noticed that their comments are censored, but they certainly get a keyboard lashing when they can’t produce any evidence except the bible or twaddle from the right wing blogs. Most of the posters on this forum are educated beyond the 10th grade.

Dataperson…I’m curious, where do you get your data and who made up that ridiculous user name. I thought mine was ridiculous, but there is a logical reason. I built ukuleles for years and in Hawaii, ukulele means singing flea, so folks here called me uke. To me Dataperson means a cyborg human wannabe with a silicon chip for a brain. What’s Up With That(get the pun?)?

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I quit working at shoprite to work online and with a little effort I easily bring in around $45 to 85 per/h. Without a doubt, this is the easiest and most financially rewarding job I’ve ever had. I actually started 6 months ago and this has totally changed my life…….http://x.co/4FzwO

Glad to see this small step in the right direction. As an operational meteorologist the past 32 years, the last 21 forecasting energy use and crop yields based on the effect of global weather patterns(and other elements) and how they influence commodity prices, there are some much bigger issues that need to be addressed by the IPCC.

The known law of photosynthesis and key role of CO2 for instance. Numerous studies have found massive benefits to our planets vegetative health as well as greatly increasing crop yields and world food production.

As a meteorologist that specializes in agriculture, it’s clear that the IPCC is not giving nearly enough weight to what I know from empirical data and experience to be the powerful fertilization effect benefiting our booming biosphere.

My hope is that they will continue to made adjustments in the right direction based on these realities.
My view may not be the most popular but unlike a television weather man or climate scientist on salary, you don’t make money in agricultural meteorology trading commodities, unless you’re right about what’s most important to crop production.

@ PassingFancy…Wikipedia was written by volunteers. Uku is flea and mele is song. The Hawaiians tell me the name is a contraction of those two words in pidgin and literally mean singing flea.

@ MeteorMike58…There are far more negative effects on crop yields than positive effects caused by global warming. If the amount of CO2 was high enough to make a predictable increase in crop yields it would wreak havoc on everything else weather related. A 50 PPM increase in CO@ is nothing to a plant that just takes what it needs anyway, but it has a much greater effect on solar absorption and reflection in the atmosphere because light is passing through hundreds of thousands of feet of air to get to the surface and back to space.

Think of it like smog in a city. You don’t see air pollution across a room, but it can obscure buildings just a mile or two away.

If you are doing market analysis based on increased CO2 you should know it is a tiny factor compared to weather conditions, temperature and rainfall. It certainly does not mean that there is an up side to rapid climate change. It would only have an up side if evolution could keep life in check, but that takes decades, centuries or even millenniums. The real problem with climate change as we have now, is that it is happening way faster than Mother Earth can adapt. Any real scientist would intuitively know that.

I read through the meteormike58 PDF he linked us to. Sorry, mike, but this report is a farce. It’s interesting reading but in no way can one come to the conclusion that the increase in food production is directly related to CO2 increase. It looks to me like just a coincidence. There are many other factors that helped cause an increase in food production. Lets start with more people growing food, better use of technology in growing food, especially in third world countries and better means of storing the food. It is a curve that has steadily been going up since man learned how to grow crops.

Statistics can be manipulated to show anything to someone who doesn’t understand the politics behind the statistics. Follow the money behind the ‘Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change’ and you will understand the politics much better.

As far as being a real scientists, my degree is in atmospheric and oceanic science from the university of michigan-1981. I was chief meteorologist at WEHT-Evansville for 11 years, then moved to a career trading commodities using the influence of the weather. I’d be willing to bet that there are few other atmospheric scientists on the planet that have analyzed more weather maps/model data than me since 1992.
Toted
I am independent and have never received a cent from any source. If you want to get in to weather………that’s my area of expertise and would be happy in assisting you.

Regarding the greenhouse effect you are not correct about CO2 absorbing solar radiation. CO2 is transparent to solar/shortwave radiation. CO2 does all of its absorbing of heat/energy at several wavelengths of long wave radiation which is emitted back out to space from the earths surface or from clouds. CO2 captures some of this radiation (that would otherwise have gone to space) then radiates it
out in all directions, some of which goes back towards the surface.

Of the 1 degree C of warming the past 150 years, around half came from greenhouse gas warming and so far, it’s been entirely beneficial. The rest came from natural cycles. The real warming that we had in the 80s and 90s partially came from CO2, the rest from a +PDO.
The PDO(Pacific Decadal Oscillation) is a powerful, natural 60 year cycle. Half of that time is spent +PDO which causes global warming that adds to CO2 warming and the other half is -PDO which causes global cooling.

The reason we had global warming from around 1920 to the mid 40s was a +PDO, then cooling in the 50s to 70s(with a global cooling scare at the end of that cycle) followed by around 25 years of warming and the global warming scare………..until a decade ago, when the PDO flipped back to negative which has stopped the warming.

Unfortunately, climate scientists did not understand that half the warming during the last warm surge was from the +PDO and they programmed global climate models with mathematical equations to represents their theory of the physics based on the assumption that ALL the warming came from CO2 and none came from the natural source(s) responsible for around half of it. This is the reason for all the climate models being too warm since the warming stalled a decade ago. It shows that global climate models have no skill.

Interesting too, is the fact that the higher latitudes warmed the most in the 80S and 90s. This is why it has been beneficial……..Longer growing seasons, more growing degree days, less residential heating needed and so on. Also, meteorology 101 tells us that the amount of energy available for mid latitude cyclones, severe storms, tornadoes and other types of extreme weather is proportional to the meridional temp gradient/contrast. When the higher latitudes warmed, there was a decrease in many measures of violent weather because of this. Heavy rain events, however did increase.

If you are interested in learning more, I will gladly send you the clear evidence in the next post.

So if the IPCC didn’t include the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) in their modeling and they wouldn’t have because the PDO wasn’t discovered/named until 1997 by Steven R. Hare then their climate forecasts are totally invalid.

Back to the drawing board IPCC if you can find it. Blunder means 2500 scientists should return their wages.
And don’t worry about returning your Nobel Prize. They totally lost their credibility with Obama’s award and anyway right now you can get one with each KFC family size meal deal.

“If you are interested in learning more, I will gladly send you the clear evidence in the next post.”
That would be good for everyone.

@meteormike58
“Of the 1 degree C of warming the past 150 years, around half came from greenhouse gas warming and so far, it’s been entirely beneficial. The rest came from natural cycles.”

How is half a degree supposed to come from natural cycles over 150 years when the cycle you talk about (PDO) is only about 60 years long? It should pretty much cancel out over 150 years. Also I was under the impression that the PDO could only cause about 0.2C temp swing, so can’t give you half of 1C i.e. 0.5C.

Add to rossm – The glacier error was wrapped up with a few other errors: one on the Amazon projections (they used a National Geographic source that wasn’t peer-reviewed), and a miss that half of Holland would be under water due to sea-level rise (this later fell back to the Dutch Government accepting that they had badly communicated: half of the drowned lands would be due to extreme event flooding).

The IPCC issued an apology for the Glacier claim in 2010.
“In a robust defence of his position and of the science of climate change, Pachauri said:
• The mistake had seriously damaged the IPCC’s credibility and boosted the efforts of climate sceptics.
• It was an isolated mistake, down to human error and “totally out of character” for the panel.
• It does not undermine the “basic truth” that human activity is causing temperatures to rise.
• That he would not resign and was ­subject to lies about his personal income and lifestyle.”http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/02/climate-change-pachauri-un-glaciers

The real basis of the problem, and it related to Pachauri’s lash-back at the Indian Environment Minister, was that sources had been used that were not peer-reviewed science. The sieve in the vetting process was the damage. And Pachauri’s slam at the political agenda of the Indian Government for their own study was correct. In those years, contrarian Governments were producing political tilted reports that they funded and produced; and orgs like the NIPCC were doing the same from without.

“So if the IPCC didn’t include the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) in their modeling and they wouldn’t have because the PDO wasn’t discovered/named until 1997 by Steven R. Hare then their climate forecasts are totally invalid.”
And the croc of the day bugle goes to bernardpalmer.
The PDO has been well researched. The summary of the work is in AR4 8.4.2 in the WG1. Referring to the IPCC’s models (the IPCC does not maintain any models), and referring to ‘climate forecasts’ … is a giveaway for ‘baloney alert’.

“Of the 1 degree C of warming the past 150 years, around half came from greenhouse gas warming and so far, it’s been entirely beneficial.”
Croc #2. There is no substantiated science anywhere that shows the AGW warming has been “entirely beneficial”. Rattle off all the claims you want. It’s an Idso-inspired fiction. Only in the 00s has an AGW fingerprint started to manifest itself above the observable threshold – and the news is bad.

Sorry Meteormike, but I don’t take much stock in anyone on the internet who brags about how brilliant and successful they are. It doesn’t mean anything to me. Every one with a keyboard and a user name is a successful expert. What I am impress by is scientists who are working to help alleviate the problems man is creating because of people like you who have all the answers but no solutions and trust me, believing that rapid climate change is beneficial is no solution to anything. I’ll put my faith in the 95% of the scientists who think otherwise, and my own common sense that tells me all this pollution is up to no good in the long run.

Trading in weather related commodities only makes you an exploiter, not a climatologist and the same is true of weatherman who make money on the research and data provided by others. A meteorologist is a fancy term for a weatherman who is notoriously wrong most of the time. It is not because they have any special talent for understanding the science. Anyone with a little education can read a weather map. It doesn’t make them an expert at climate science.

Oh, and BTW, a degree in atmospheric and oceanic science from the University of Michigan makes you no more an expert than a farmer with a degree in wheat farming from the University of Hawaii. On the other hand, UH does have a great program in ocean sciences which is where I studied meteorology, atmospheric and ocean sciences.

I can assure you of one thing, an increase CO2 may be beneficial to plant life in controlled experiments, but uncontrolled absorption by the oceans and the resultant increase in acidity scares the hell out of me and anyone else who really has an education in ocean sciences. I sure wouldn’t put my money in tuna these days (although I did once help design a tuna farm). The entire ecosystem of marine biology should be on the endangered species list. The life in the sea is the foundation of life on the land. We are all interrelated and interdependent. My experience in the Merchant Marines taught me that the ocean is a very unforgiving environment when it comes to pollution and our actions definitely have consequences. In fact some beaches near where I live now have more plastic than sand on them.

Most of these other regular commenters on climate change/CAGW consider your comments to be heresy. According to them the issue is settled science. No further discussion please. I suspect many of them would prefer to burn (Sorry, not burn. That would increase CO2.) sequester the infidels. I’m not sure it is wise to identify yourself. You never know what some of these climate change jihadies might do?

bernardpalmer…Trust me I don’t jump around from nonsense. The IPCC didn’t need data on the PDO to see that increases in green house gasses was the bulk of the problem. They were right even back in 97 and they are right today. Of course there were errors in the data. There always is in a relatively new science. That is why scientist keep gathering data and coming up with better mathematical models to collate that data. Was Einstein right before or after he completed his theories? In fact aren’t they still called theories and not laws of physics? Nobody in the peer review business is calling Einstein a quack. Science is a progression of knowledge and always the result of mistakes which mean trial and error, but it generally is not taking steps backwards which is exactly what the republicans want to do about AGW theories. And I say republicans because it is all about politics and money but not the grant money they keep harping about. It’s about billions and billions, not a million here and 10,000 there and that money flow is being protected by corporations not individual scientists hoping for grants. If you can’t figure that out at least, than there ain’t much point in commenting here because most folks here get it.

rkipling…Funny you. I can see them now, tree huggers and whale lovers in robes and berkas looking for quacks driving around in circles in their SUVs looking for jihadists that are in a war with the devil.

“Wikipedia was written by volunteers. Uku is flea and mele is song. The Hawaiians tell me the name is a contraction of those two words in pidgin and literally mean singing flea.”
Quite possibly a volunteer who actually knows the language. You acknowledge that you re unfamiliar with the subject materiel.

Sault- Perhaps SA should post those rules as a part of their commenting policy. Perhaps you should also try to improve your reading comprehension based on you having written “If you can’t accept that the vast majority of scientific evidence points towards human activity altering the climate then maybe this website isn’t for you.” I accept that human activity is altering the climate- sorry you are wrong in your judgment of my position.
Singing flea- my scientifically accurate comments have cut from Climatewire/SA and my ability to post eliminated. How do you feel about censorship? When is it wrong? I tend to approach the issue of AGW based on reviewing the data/papers I have read and the information upon which those papers were based. I can’t say I gave any more than a second of thought to the log on name. You wrote- “There are far more negative effects on crop yields than positive effects caused by global warming.” Do you have any observational data to support that conclusion or are you basing your conclusion on what someone else concluded will or might happen?
Rkipling- intelligent observations.

RSS satellite lower troposphere temperature measurements are now up to 17 years 8 months with no sign of any kind of global warming. Satellite temperature measurements began in January, 1979. The record ends at March, 2014. So half the remote sensing system satellite record shows nothing happening.

I heard on the news this morning that Lake Superior is still frozen. The iron ore barges from Minnesota can’t get to the steel mills in Gary, Indiana because of all the ice on the lake.

kripling, You haven’t offered any opposing views here. You must be too busy chasing phantoms to write anything relevant to the subject in the form of rebuttals. Don’t worry, that happens a lot to folks that post here without a clue. You can’t squeeze intelligent thought out of a troll.

Incidentally, I don’t live on CAGW blogs. I don’t even know what CAGW stands for. Is this your invention? SA is the only blog on the internet I even participate in, and generally only on matters I have expertise in. What’s your story?

There is no point in arguing substance with you and others. You are convinced that your views are beyond question. That’s fine with me. My point in commenting here was to advise other commenters that nothing is likely to change your mind. And I have no intention to tilt at those windmills myself.

I actually have no problem with how you spend your time. If you enjoy commenting here, it wasn’t my intention to dissuade you from doing so. Unlike some, I don’t believe I have all the answers. At some point in the future this issue will be resolved. Nothing much is likely to be done in the way of mitigation anyway, so my hope is that it will not be as severe as you believe. Beyond making individual commenters fell better after sharing their views, this debate is pointless.

Catastrophic Anthropomorphic Global Warming. I suspect you were putting me on about not recognizing the acronym.

If you wish to describe my comments as trolling, that’s fine. Insults here are unimportant although I try not to do that myself.

Comments are interesting partly as psychological studies without regard to the topic. Environmental topics seem to draw a broader spectrum of samples. I wouldn’t have thought anyone would care why I read and comment, but flea asked, so there it is.

There was more weird sh*t coming from climate scientists. Flooded Manhattan and enormous wheat fields grown on frozen wastelands of Canada and Siberia, for example.

Disclaimer: I don’t remember or care whether it was coming from IPCC or another of myriads of similar organizations. But it would be a good article for Scientific American: 10 weirdest climate change predictions.